Whoopi Goldberg's Knicks Devotion

Whoopi Goldberg walks through her Knicks fandom, her basketball movie past, and the way New York sports shaped her as a kid.

Rich opens on the current season. The Knicks are in, the Cavaliers are the first-round matchup, and Whoopi is simply happy they are playing beautifully. That is all she asks for.

She started following at age eight. Her older brother was a huge sports fan, and she wanted to do whatever he did. Baseball, football, whatever he played. She was not good at any of it. Realized early on she could not hit a curveball or make a jump shot. Figured out she would talk about sports instead.

Growing up in New York spoiled her. The Giants. The Knicks. The Rangers. Joe Willie Namath and the Jets. She thought everyone played that hard because that is what she saw around her.

Favorite Knick of all time comes without a pause. Walt Frazier. She calls him one of the most elegant, stylistic, fabulous men in sports. The fur coats. The styling. You wanted to know them, then watch them play their behinds off. She also thinks Clyde could still give the current Knicks a few minutes if they needed him to.

She contrasts that generation with today's game, careful to throw no shade. Those guys, she says, you could hit them with a car or run them over with a train and they still came and played. That was extraordinary.

The conversation pivots to Eddie, the 1996 film where she coached the New York Knickerbockers. Her favorite memory is hanging around with the players. Rick Fox. Mark Jackson. John Salley. Tiny Archibald in there somewhere. She loved getting to know all of them.

Rich asks about Dennis Rodman. Whoopi liked Dennis. She saw herself in him. He was his own self, made no apologies for it, played hard, and was present. That is all you can ask of anybody.

On whether the movie shot inside actual Knicks games, she thinks they recreated the environment. Either way, it remains one of her favorite movies. She mentions the ongoing push to remake Sister Act, and wonders aloud if they should have been trying to remake Eddie instead. Though they would not need her now, she jokes, because the Knicks are on their way.

Rich closes with the obvious tease. The Knicks needed a coach this past year. Whoopi says she hinted at it. Nobody bit.

The bit lands because the fandom is real. The favorite player was picked in under a second. The memory of the movie is specific and affectionate. And the picture she paints of 1970s New York sports, where the athletes wore fur coats and played like they meant it, is the kind only somebody who lived it can draw.